Skills

Research

Research interests

Ecological and evolutionary speciation

Since Darwin (1859) published the book with the cumbersome title “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection”, researchers have tried to find out more about how one species can transform into one or more new species. Which are the drivers of this process, and are there common patterns between speciation processes? My Ph.D. concerns the speciation processes in mosquito species complexes in South East Asian mosquitoes.

The evolution and use of mitochondrial genomes in parasitic worms

As part of my Master of Research I published a paper on “Making the most of mitochondrial genomes – Markers for phylogeny, molecular ecology and barcodes in Schistosoma (Platyhelminthes: Digenea)”. Dr. Littlewood and myself have continued our collaboration, and are using similar methods to work on different strains of parasitic Cestodes, investigating how variation is distributed across the genome and which part of the genome provides better markers for the strains.